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Comment Signature Results

After 190 comments to my question about leaving comment signatures, I can say with much confidence that most of you do not like it when commentators leave their signature in a comment. The overall feeling is you consider it as spam because the commentator’s name is already linked to their site.

It was a landslide victory for the Nay side. Only five commentators voted to flavor of allowing comment signatures. About another five didn’t care either way and rest were against signatures in the comments.

This does not mean I will be banning comment signatures on this blog. However, I will be asking commentators to refrain from using a comment signature when leaving a comment. Your name is already linked to your web site. There is no need to repeat it in the comments. If you wish link to another site that is relevant to the discussion then feel free to do so as we have no problem with that.

64 thoughts on “Comment Signature Results”

I do not think having a signature within you comments is good – because commenting I think is taking part within a conversation. stating opinions or disagreeing with someone else or even with the author – (John Chow)

Blog networks are not forums – so its pointless to have a signature within your comments – my opnion

Apart the jokes, it is so lame about putting a signature to spam the blog, you might get the little fishes to click on your sig…but those that know what ethic is will probably think there is nothing worth in your blog to read since you dare to spam.

I think that in some cases it will work, at least for the beginner bloggers for who +-10 does make a difference. Putting the URL in the signature will make it stand out from all the names, plus more people will see it. I dunno about you, but when I scan comments, I only see the body and not the author. So if the URL is part of the signature, then it is part of the body. This way more people will see it, and some might click it out of boredom.

However, I’m quite against this practice. I will only visit someone’s blog if they said something worthvile in the comment. And if they did, it’s not much trouble to find the link above. 🙂

Exactly, and I think this should be highly frowned upon. Rather than say they won’t get banned, I think John should give everyone that does it (other than linking to “another” site – not their own for comment reference purposes) a fair warning, and if they repeat it, a ban (at least from further commenting until they can agree not to continue with link spam). Forums are the same way, they don’t like it when you spam your links (except signature fields are okay). Unfortunately this is NOT a forum and does not have nor will it require a signature field at any given time.

You can interpret it as linking to your own site for reference is not allowed but if you need to link to someone else’s site for reference, its okay. If you have a relevant post on your site and you want to reference it, simply just say something like “I wrote about it on my site”… People are smart enough to know your name is linked to your site if they want to read about it. They don’t need you to comment spam the direct link to the post itself if they’re really interested in reading about it.

At the same time though, some sites do cover multiple subjects so it is not terribly annoying for someone to have a direct link to the post. Especially if the post in question isn’t a recent post, then you gotta dig through the archives? By the time I have to click on next page I lose interests lol and perhaps miss out on the opportunity to read something that I care for because I have to play “where is waldo” on someone’s site.

I think it is not wise to spam in comments, I don’t get it the author will delete it sooner or later if it is spam, so why is this all for?
Besides spam comments are polluting and distracts people from the discussion. COMMENT is not a place for signatures or spams, it is for your comments. Am I so angry

No, it’s not at all the same. In a forum your name links to your profile while in a blog your name links to your website. A signature in the forum allows people to click straight through to your site. You’re right though, in a blog it’s unnecessary.

I agree that the idea of comment signatures is a little over the top. I’d say that as long as they link their name (and they could even use their site name as the commenter name) then that should be enough.
They wouldn’t get on my nerves, probably, but I can see why it would bother a lot of people.

I think signature in the comment is not right. It should be done only when one needs to share some very valuable information with his fellow friends. Otherwise just for linking purpose I feel it should not be allowed.

i was really in lack of topic for my blog n then i got ur ebook and voila i got the topic there. it was fun to read ur book n to write something worse for it too. any way i have ditched u in my review but in a respectable way. thank u 🙂

I’m incredibly happy to hear that the outcome was so one-sided. I think that the extra link in your signature automatically makes me not want to visit your site…seems like a snake oil saleman tactic to me.

Yah, there really is no reason to leave a signature after your comment if you have a link to your website above the comment. Glad this was the decision as I don’t like to scroll anymore than I have to in order to write a comment.

Agreed. I do not mind signature results, but I feel for all the new do-follow blogs, people are starting to spam URL’s. I feel someone should make the commenter’s name do-follow, but any other links/signature inside the post nofollow, or even removed.

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